May 18, 2007

Should AG Gonzales be impeached?

My colleague and FSR co-editor Frank Bowman has been calling for Congress to conclude its investigation of the US Attorney firings by impeaching AG Alberto Gonzales. Writing from Slate, Frank now has this essay entitled "The Icing Is Iglesias: His firing is reason alone for Congress to impeach Gonzales." Here is how it begins:

Congress could and should impeach Alberto Gonzales. One ground for doing so, as I have previously suggested, is the attorney general's amnesiac prevarication in his testimony before the Senate and the House. But if Congress wants more, it need look no further than the firing of David Iglesias, former U.S. attorney in New Mexico. The evidence uncovered in Gonzales' Senate and House testimony demonstrates that he fired Iglesias not because of a policy disagreement or a management failure, but because Iglesias would not misuse the power of the Department of Justice in the service of the Republican Party. To fire a U.S. attorney for refusing to abuse his power is the essence of an impeachable offense.

Federalist embodies the ancient Oriental concept known as “truthiness.” There are a few problems with his argument that Al Gore, the former Vice President of the United States should have been “impeached” for “ordering” the “INS” to give “felons” US Citizenship.

While Federalist makes allusions to his status has a lawyer (and therefore, a real American), he rarely picks up on our inside jokes or use of terms of art, which has lead me to conclude that he is not entitled to the rights of a real American, i.e. a lawyer.

When asked for “proof” of the above statement, Federalist provided this URL:
http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/blogs/politicalticker/2006/11/wilson-requests-election-monitors.html
This is a link to a story entitled “Wilson requests election monitors.” It does not involve: 1) Gore; 2) felons; 3) or citizenship. Instead it is a story which begins “Locked in a tight race to keep her congressional seat, Rep. Heather Wilson, R-New Mexico, said Tuesday that voters were turned away from the polls because the county clerk did not provide enough ballots.” It does not even allude a theory that the reason for this was because Al Gore ordered the INS to give Felons citizenship, and that the felons went to this polling station.

Oh, it also doesn’t explain on what authority the vice president could order the INS to do anything, nor does it provide an actual citation to such an order. (If it existed, he would have provided it, and probably would have provided the text.)

Further, assuming that the vice president had that power (which he might at certain times, I am not 100% sure), it is then questionable whether such actions would have been illegal. I am not an expert in immigration law, but I am pretty sure that merely being a felon is not an absolute bar to citizenship.

For this reason, it would seem that Federalist embodies this ancient and beautiful concept of truthiness. We must respect it, for it is his creed.

Geez S.cotus, I was referring to what happened in Heather Wilson's re-election.

It's really not disputed that Al Gore put pressure on the INS to blow off procedures to give people citizenship.

Posted by: federalist | May 19, 2007 8:09:03 PM

A lawyer would have cited to the operative document (which would seem to be some sort of binding memorandum, or an executive order, which was signed while Clinton was in incapacitated or something). After doing providing such a text, the lawyer would have provided a legal theory as to why it was illegal or impeachable.

(You said "ordered" and now you say "pressured." This would appear to mean something different.)